Do I remember him? It was here I folded your letter, and crushed it. For days it has lain subtly unfurling in the corner where I threw it, a swatted paper moth. You don't ask about the London audiences these days, what the critics are saying to my Lady Macbeth, not about anything important to be now... but about him. Do you remember...?

Of the two women I am remembering, one knew the very secret of secrets, which is the art of keeping a secret; the other knew how to use secrets, which meant at some time or other she let them loose. I don't know when I came to understand how confused their secrets were with mine. But I sense there is a pattern to it that the four of us complete - my grandmother, my mother, myself and now you.

My grandmother was a formidable, Depression-made terror of a woman. I say it with respect; for whatever cause my mother and I both had to resent the old stinker, Nicolina Leone was more interesting than the whole pack of aunts and uncles put together. My grandmother and I shared an instinct for the theatre. That was what we saw in each other and it made a bond between us. Not that Nicolina ever went on the stage in any actual sense. But in a deeper reality, I don't know that she was ever off it.

By day, Darlene Madott
is a solicitor; by night
she's a writer. This is
her first book of stories
under the Oberon Imprint.

The stories all relate
to a central concern:
a concern for women
in their relations
with each other,
with men and with
the world. The central
problem these women have
to deal with is how
to adjust to their pain
while remaining active,
caring human beings.